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happydazenews OP t1_iyxrv4s wrote

I made a website called Happy Daze (happydaze.io) which only features positive, inspiring and good news stories. The best part about the site that it is completely advertisement free and has a high bar for quality in regards of the articles and the visuals/ ease of use. I recently posted my 100th article and wanted to commemorate it by telling reddit about it.
There is an iOS app called ( Happy Daze News) which is the same as the website but in app form. I am planning on releasing an android version ASAP. I have spent/spend a lot of money making this and on up keep ( server/domain/etc. )and would really appreciate if more people knew about it.
The website/app has absolutely no trackers/cookies of any kind and you can surf freely knowing that I am not going to collect any of your information. Same with the app no permission that are linked to you/ and no account needed to browse/ read the stories. The app has no notifications and if one wanted to receive them they would have to subscribe to the email newsletter.
The inspiration for this website/app was a personal one. I have always liked watching the news but recently I cannot seem to watch any mainstream news without becoming depressed or dejected about the current state of the world, so I focused on creating a platform that only features positive/inspiring stories with no annoying ads in an effort to create the most user friendly way to stay informed on all the good things happening in this great big world of ours. And don't be mistaken there are definitely great things happening all around us, but the big news outlets predominantly feature negative news so it can be easy to fall into that trap.
Currently, I source a lot of articles from educational sources (colleges, universities, journals, etc. ) but in the future I want to write more of them ( in house ) and create video elements to help illustrate the concepts and research in the articles. I would greatly appreciate any feedback and new ideas I could implement.
Here are some cool features of the site:
Great search functionality
Great tags to group a certain subject/category
Highlights the research article and provides easy access
Here is some of the feedback I have received already:
* a way to save articles
* swipe to like action for articles
* find a way to have more articles in the Home Screen
Thank You very much. Stay informed, and Stay Happy.
Happy Daze
LinkTree: https://linktr.ee/happydazenews

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hardtofindagoodname t1_iyyn09q wrote

Great stuff - thanks for helping the internet to be a better place.

I couldn't immediately tell, but do you allow people to submit their own links/articles? The thing I've found with positive news sites is that they don't have the same breadth of articles as say r/worldnews. Most people have ADD when it comes to this sort of stuff so it would be nice to have a very diverse set of constantly added news, otherwise people will not regularly return and eventually forget about your site. The only way I know to counter this would be to have many contributors. Maybe you could make it work in parallel with a same named subreddit and cross-post articles bi-directionally from your website to the subreddit? Then, your other social media outlets like TikTok can help promote it further. Your website would be the central "repository".

My 2c ;)

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happydazenews OP t1_iyyx7dq wrote

Great tip! You are totally right I am trying to diversify my articles to include a variety of different types of good news and cool stories. I will def make it more clear for people to send me ideas and news related stuff so I can make better content. For now if anyone is interested you can send me an email at happydazecontact@gmail.com

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PoshinoPoshi t1_iyz836z wrote

If you wanted, you could make a subreddit that does the filtering by upvotes and grab the good news from there? Hope this catches on 🙌

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workana t1_iyzsqmv wrote

There is already a subreddit called r/upliftingnews. Why not just use that.

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amalgam_reynolds t1_iz084jz wrote

Because half of the posts on there are just r/orphancrushingmachine posts in disguise.

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Calencre t1_iz0lqyf wrote

Just need to be careful with something like that, as depending on how the moderation works, it's easy for articles which are actually horrifying if you think about them for more than 5 seconds to sneak in, and next thing you know it's /r/UpliftingNews in website form

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relative t1_iyyo41t wrote

There's a stripe tracker on every page.

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happydazenews OP t1_iyywvmn wrote

Oh good eye, Sorry must have missed that one. I used a few code templates for my site where I had to go in and manually delete the google tracking which was on by default and adjust a few other things. I will my best try to remove it ASAP. I did check the site with like one of those cookie blocker add ons on chrome but it said there wasn't anything, so I'm glad you pointed it out. Thank you.

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Iloandstitch t1_iyys2xv wrote

What’s a stripe tracker?

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relative t1_iyyszc3 wrote

Stripe is a payment gateway and to use it you need to embed their javascript on your website. their script includes tracking code that sends your activity on the page to their server

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IProgramSoftware t1_iyztp5k wrote

What’s in it for you?

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PandaKing185 t1_iz09g8c wrote

It's always healthy to be suspicious, but some people just like to do good things. And it looks like OP is doing just that. It'd be hard to lie about trackers and ads when there are so many tools to find them. Someone already found a tracker OP missed and he acknowledged he missed it and that it will be removed.

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paanvaannd t1_iz0flrj wrote

Entirely agree.

What a lot of people also don’t realize is that free (as in “freedom” and “beer”) software runs most of the world. The proprietary stuff like Microsoft and Apple systems are all at the consumer level, which is dwarfed by the number of Linux-based machines out there. And Linux is entirely free! No built-in tracking, ads, monetization, subscriptions, etc.

The phrase “if it’s free, you’re the product” is excellent advice when dealing with proprietary tech. To my knowledge, OP’s site is not free (as in “freedom”), so it’s warranted to be wary. As you mentioned, there are several ways to test OP’s claims and it seems they check out, as far as verifiable.

But it’s also important to keep in mind that there are millions of individuals across the world who just want to do good for others through contributing free works to society with no strings attached!

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amalgam_reynolds t1_iz08y9n wrote

This might very well be something you've already thought of, and it doesn't look like there any such articles on your site so far, but if you're thinking about expanding, I'd be very careful of excluding all r/OrphanCrushingMachine type stories. I.e., stories that sounds uplifting and happy, such as "grade school student pays off the lunch debt for their entire class" without addressing the bleak reality that our society has put children into debt.

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nandapandatech t1_iz181vy wrote

How are you planning to monetize this / keep the lights on?

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happydazenews OP t1_iz21a1o wrote

Currently my job is able to cover all the expenses, but I do want to expand and create more quality content in the future. I think maybe doing some merchandise will allow me to keep the lights on without having to rely on ads. Thanks for the comment.

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